Mastering the Startup World with Mark Randall | GrowthPulse The B2B Sales Podcast Ep 17

Buckle up for an enlightening conversation with Mark Randall, a tenured leader in B2B sales with unparalleled expertise in advancing startups from ground zero to IPO. Embark on a fascinating journey through the cutthroat world of startups in the APAC region, where Mark shares invaluable insights into the pivotal role of a robust professional network in circumventing costly hiring missteps. Listen as he recounts his unique experiences with WP Engine, Bulletproof & Rackspace whose team scaled their way to IPO while he lead their Australian and APAC teams.

Mark introduces us to his latest venture - Australia Go-to-Market, a beacon for local startups and global tech companies alike, offering top-tier consulting, insightful recommendations and part-time Head of Sales CRO support. As we navigate this conversation, Mark elucidates on his adaptability mantra, adjusting his leadership style to the unique needs of each venture, while underlining the significance of apt resources and support, the bedrock of any successful startup. Delve deeper as we discuss the intricacies of penetrating new markets, dissect the impact of cultural nuances on purchasing behaviour, and the influence of local employment laws on the talent pool. 

As we reach the heart of our conversation, Mark and Simon offer their perspectives on cultivating a dynamic team of self-starters in the chaotic universe of startups. They delve into the quintessential qualities they seek in their sales teams – resourcefulness, independence and drive - to weather the storm of uncertainty that startups often find themselves in. Gain valuable insights into the art of hiring, formulating a go-to-market plan, and the influence of imposter syndrome on decision-making. Tune in to glean Mark’s invaluable advice for budding entrepreneurs and team leaders, a culmination of a lifetime of experience and hard-earned wisdom.

Transcript

Simon Peterson: 0:00

Hiring the right people, god it's. I've made some pretty silly old mistakes in hiring over the period and I think if I reflect on some of the mistakes and they're not bad people I just hide them for the wrong roles, right.

Mark Randall: 0:14

You know, founded startups. It's their first time, not always right, but certainly with a lot of the organizations that I'm working with. So, you know, make sure you work. You know, either in a professional, personal or, you know, have a strong network of people that have been there, seen it and done it before that you can talk to and work through stuff. You know the mistakes hurt you more than anything. So you know, do everything that you can to try and avoid them.

Daniel Bartels: 0:41

Welcome to Growth Pulse, the B2B Sales Podcast. You might be a salesperson, you could lead a sales team, maybe run a business, or you're a battle-tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you. Great salespeople are built, not born. We learn so much from the deals we win, but we learn even more from the deals we lose. In each episode, we bring you some of the world's leading sales people, sales leaders and experts in sales tech to share their best lessons from both their wins and their losses.

Daniel Bartels: 1:13

Before we start, please check out the screen of your phone or laptop and, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you've clicked subscribe and press that like button down below. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to follow so we can let you know when we publish each new episode. If you liked the episode, drop us a comment with any questions about the show. We'd love to get to know our audience. Great businesses always feature world-class salespeople and the best salespeople are always learning, so let's jump in. Welcome everybody to another episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B Sales podcast. I'm Dan Bartels, one of your co-hosts, and I'm here with Simon Peterson, mate. Welcome back to another show.

Simon Peterson: 2:00

Good day Dan Great to be here, I'm really looking forward to today's show. We're going to talk with Mark, which is going to be awesome.

Daniel Bartels: 2:05

Mate. We've got a great guest, mark Randall Mate. Welcome to the show.

Mark Randall: 2:10

Thank you for having me Good to be here.

Daniel Bartels: 2:12

Mate, we are so excited You've got a phenomenal background. That sort of really drew my attention to a lot of stuff you've done. You posted on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago and talked about the fact that you've been in some amazing businesses that have gone from a startup through to through your IPO, and, having done that multiple times, that's a really unique mix. And having done it also working in APAC, that's a piece that Simon and I have had a bit of experience in running software companies or technology companies in APAC and there's a really different flavour to it. Now, mate, I want to make sure I absolutely go through your resume correctly, so I'll give it a be here. But the key businesses you ran Rax-based, from kind of zero to IPO and then ran WP Engine, and that's correct, isn't it? They're the two businesses that you ran.

Mark Randall: 3:06

Yeah, absolutely, and I was not running their local operations in Australia and APAC, but between those two sandwiched was Bulletproof as well, which also listed on the ASX where I headed up the go-to-market function. So, yeah, I've been involved in those go-to-market roles in last four organisations and, yeah, three of them so far have gone to IPO.

Daniel Bartels: 3:30

And now you're running a company called Australia Go-to-Market. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes, and tell me all about Australia Go-to-Market for our listeners. I mean, obviously I'm assuming it does what it does, what it says in the name of the brand, but tell us about the business.

Mark Randall: 3:43

Yeah well, it's very different to what I've been doing for the last 20 years or so, working for local tech companies and setting up global tech companies in the APAC region. Australia. Go-to-market is basically me right now, so I'm providing go-to-market expertise, consulting, recommendations and a little bit of ongoing head of sales CRO support on a part-time basis to both local startups and also with the intention of supporting global tech companies with their expansion into this market. So it's new for me. I've only been doing it for the last two or three months, but I'm fully occupied, which is good. So the first challenge is done, which is fill your time and looking forward to continue building it out and scaling it next year.

Daniel Bartels: 4:37

That's exciting and I think, look, it's an interesting piece that you're targeting there, which is how do we, the Australian software companies who are wanting to grow and expand, but also overseas organisations, come into region?

Daniel Bartels: 4:50

And again, I mentioned at the top of this, it's a piece that Simon and I have talked about privately a lot and it's a very different skill set, particularly when you're bringing an organisation out into the region. How to actually approach that, how to grow it properly, how not to scale too fast that can be a real challenge as well. So we definitely wanted to delve into that, because I think there's a lot of people that listen to the podcast who are either going through some of those challenges. They might be in AE, they could be leading a team, they could be asked to be first on ground, so you're given that role of do all those things under that banner all at the same time. So I want to delve back into your kind of experiences. How are things given to you when these key roles had different sized teams, like, take us through that experience of the first couple of those types of roles or the conversations you had. How was it positioned to you when you took on those early roles?

Mark Randall: 5:49

Well, they've all been different, of course, and different scenarios, and I've been there at different stages of the journey and had different levels of influence over the outcome. Of course, as your career progresses and you tend to have more senior roles over time. It's kind of interesting if you mentioned Rackspace, which was the first one and one of the roles that I've really really enjoyed in my career, where I was first in region. The business was established in the US, was established in Europe but had nothing in Australia or APAC. In that situation that actually already made the decision to expand into APAC but into Hong Kong, and they had invested in a data center in Hong Kong and had built a sales team out there and Australia wasn't really on the radar. And because I'd had experience here, I'd actually move back to the UK where I joined Rackspace, originally in Rackspace UK, but previously I'd been working for a company in Australia that had been in the hosting space as well as domain names and business board band and those types of things. I had experience with the market and I knew there was an opportunity here. So I kind of convinced them, if you like, that they should give me a go when I relocated back here, obviously had the experience with the business already, which was hugely beneficial and helpful. But really I say to people, they sent me with a laptop and a good luck card.

Mark Randall: 7:12

Essentially I was on my eye and there really wasn't a lot of support.

Mark Randall: 7:16

We didn't even have a data center in the region to sell, so we had to go out and find whatever niche we could, which essentially was Australian-based businesses that had most of their customers overseas, because that's the only place we had data centers that we could serve them for.

Mark Randall: 7:34

So you carved out that niche and did quite well with some Kiwi SaaS companies and other people that are very internationally focused in terms of their sales and marketing, of course and then eventually built a business case to invest in the data center and to scale the business from there. Wpengin, which was my most recent full-time position, that was very different. They had already decided that they were going to move an expander into the Australian market, have an expander successfully into Amir around 18 months before. So you know the what they asked me to do was essentially put together a go to market plan plan from day one to build out a team and actually build it into a real business from the get-go. So they were both zero to 50 million, in one case 20 million, in another case kind of journeys building the team up from zero to 50 to 100 people. But they both were very different in terms of how they started, I guess.

Daniel Bartels: 8:41

So many times where you're given and you're called, a laptop and a business card and gone out to lead your success. I mean so, when we've done these engagements, like how do you think about it in terms of what the real task to do is? I mean, what are we trying to describe to people here?

Simon Peterson: 9:00

Yeah, well, it's an interesting one because in our case and I think your case, they're US-based companies. They've done reasonably well. They're used to working in a market with many times the size that we deal with in Australia and typically they've got a reasonable culture built and a way of doing things. And I think the challenge for coming out to certainly to Australia and to Asia in general is you've got a product that's fairly similar in the US, the UK, australia, asia, et cetera. But the way companies in Australia buy is fundamentally different and I think you've got to merge what's great about the existing culture, understand the culture of your buyers and somehow bring them together. And I think the other big one is the talent pool in Australia is quite different to the US. I mean, it's a obviously it's a much larger market and they're very used to finding people, the right people, very quickly. And I think you find here that in general, I've found that American business leaders. Now we speak the same language, so it must be the same and we're probably more similar than not. But it's the nuances of where we're different that's going to make you a successful growth engine down in this region, and I think so same, same but different. It's probably the best way to describe it.

Simon Peterson: 10:21

But Australians in general hate being sold to and I think you take the methods and the processes, et cetera, out of an American company. You've got to understand. You've got to tweak some of the marketing. You've got to tweak how you treat employees. I think employment law is fundamentally different and as simple as that. Those sort of things educating our masters in HQ around now, what's different? And I think if you don't, if you can't articulate that as first on ground or early on ground, you're always trying to play catch up. Mark, what are your thoughts? You've been through it a couple of times.

Mark Randall: 10:59

Yeah, very aligned, very aligned to yours. So you know there's differences and I think you know the key thing really is to make sure that you've got control over the things that you need to have control over in order to get success and, if you can't have control, to make sure that you've got very strong support in place because, as you say, like the same things don't work, people buy differently. You know, one of the buying behaviors I think that's quite pronounced is, I think buyers in the US and this is reflected in the kind of marketing materials that tend to proliferate tend to be quite they don't tend to be quite as in depth in terms of their research as Australian buyers. So a lot of the marketing falls short because you know it's very, you know, high level. It doesn't provide any of the details that people actually need, you know, to educate themselves about. You know your offering and make an informed. You know comparison and choice and I think you know that's that's. You know one, one small difference.

Mark Randall: 11:58

I think the team again, as you said, is is, or how you motivate people, is very different. You know, we've had, you know, people you know, in my organization, so obviously other sales leaders and so on, come over from the US and you know some understand instinctively that it's different. You know other people don't. And kind of initiative you know kind of wondering, you know why aren't people like jumping on the tables when they win a deal, and you know it's just some of those things are just, are just different. And you know, as I say, it's it, the culture of an organization is super important.

Mark Randall: 12:31

I was really fortunate in both global companies I worked for that they had a very strong culture, they had very strong leadership and you know, to a large extent I was trusted to. You know to go and do what I've been hired to do and you know my feedback was was was taken on board, in fact almost the opposite. You know, in the early days of Rackspace because it was kind of an afterthought and it was kind of initiated good by me rather than the company we were kind of just under the radar for the first two or three years and it was only when, you know, the investment in the DART Center was made that actually anyone really paid attention so that you could actually just get on with doing things. You know the way you needed. But WPENG was very different.

Mark Randall: 13:13

As I say, it was a plan from the start. There was, you know, a lot of oversight and and you know, support. But yeah, at the end of the day, you can't always get all the things that you want. So I think experience is one of the things that you know helps guide you in knowing. You know where you need to push to make sure that you can execute effectively.

Daniel Bartels: 13:34

And I think, mark, what you're talking about there is the mindset of when you're running a region, whether it be for a, for a startup, or you're running it for a global organization expanding into. They're both startups and and I think this is this piece that so many global leaders when they're looking at a regional you know region like Australia, we're on the other side of the world. We operate most of the time when you're asleep. We need to be able to be self-sufficient. You know decision making needs to be for so many things that that you have distributed decision making for overseas, whether it be in Amir or North America. You know you don't have that. So it all gets channeled back into into a small number of people, which is really similar to a small startup and and unfortunately, often you're part of an organization that is much, much more mature, but your customers have no idea who you are and the marketing messaging. They've never seen it before. You know you take Racksbakers at pace as an example.

Daniel Bartels: 14:35

When you launched, it wasn't a brand name that anyone from an IT perspective who had only experienced lived in Australia would even be concerned about, because there was no presence here. There's no. You know whether we're the same level of maturity. It's just not going to be there. So all of these key things, where the messaging kind of falls short is the it's back to a startup. But you're in that sort of early part of the S curve. How did you navigate kind of those, those experiences and how do you communicate that back to your, your leaders, as to where you're are comparative to where the business is at? Because I know that that's something that that we've kind of been through that that process. But I think everyone has a bit of a different flavor on how they go about doing it.

Mark Randall: 15:18

Yeah, I think I was. I was fortunate in many ways in that the people that I worked with had, you know, largely experienced that before, from the perspective, at least, of being in the US and, you know, being in a senior VP of sales roles for a global, global tech company, or in the latter stages of my time at WPMG and being, you know, head of international out of out of London, you know they'd they'd had experiences of setting up for remote regional teams as well. So I think you know you know that that helped a huge amount. The other thing and I think you're right 100% about it being a startup, but it's a very different type of startup as well. Right, there's good and bad in both. I mean, I've done two roles very early stage with Australian-based tech companies as well, on similar growth journeys and without doubt, the two US ones are similar in many ways. The two Australian ones are similar in many ways. The global and Australia ones are not very similar at all, other than the fact that they've both start-ups. The problems are different. The challenges tend to be different.

Mark Randall: 16:24

With the global tech companies, you often find that most of your battles that you're fighting are internal, if you like. You're trying to get support. You're trying to get things changed to suit the local market need. You're trying to make sure communication is there. You're trying to make sure you can get resources for training and other things that aren't within your team's capability or your lot resource to do Locally with Australian companies.

Mark Randall: 16:49

You tend to have that very fast decision making.

Mark Randall: 16:53

You don't have any barriers internally, but you don't have as much money and you don't have as much resources and things that you can go out there and use. You have to build everything from scratch. Personally, I think that experience of having done both has been one of the things that's been hugely helpful and beneficial to me, because I've had enough of the start-up experience to be able to apply that in a global tech company. But I've also had enough experience of how businesses scale, how you scale departments and teams and KPIs and go to market in general up to thousands of people in a much larger global organization, because I've been part of those organizations. That's in many ways what I'm trying to do now, I guess, in my role at Australia go to market is bring that experience of having seen what good looks like at scale and bring that and make that available to smaller tech companies that maybe don't have too early a stage to have the expertise, experience or to be able to bring people on board full-time in those roles.

Simon Peterson: 18:03

Yeah, exactly, mark. Obviously it takes a special kind of salesperson to join a start-up. You've probably worked with AEs that really thrive in the mega software companies like the sales forces, the oracles and the SAPs, and then there's a different type of salesperson that thrives in the start-up environment. What's your take on, if I'm on a listening to this and I really want to go work for a start-up and I see growth, what are some of the key attributes of a salesperson that you'd look at and say that's the kind of person who will thrive in this environment?

Mark Randall: 18:39

Yeah, I think resourcefulness number one in a much larger company. If you look at the full spectrum of things that lead to go to market success as an individual, sales contribute to your probably responsible for 5% of them. You've got marketing teams that do things for you. You've got customer success teams that do things for you. You've got leadership and in pro-experience teams that do things for you In a true start-up, like an early stage start-up, like a seed series A, the type of organizations that I'm working with now. They don't have those things. So you need a much wider range of skills. You need to be very resourceful, you need to be a self-starter. When I built out my early teams, I was always looking Experience is important, but I would rather have had a team of highly motivated self-starters that are resourceful, that have something to prove, than have people with 10 years experience on their CV, because those are the types of people that bond together as a team, that collaborate, that gets it done, basically, and are willing to turn their hand to anything.

Daniel Bartels: 19:53

So when you use the terminology self-starter I think this is where all sales leaders are on the podcast today, and I think it's a term that we use regularly and often if you're an AE, you're early in your sales career and you hear that what does that mean to you? I think someone will ask the same for you after this, but to me it means someone who is just focused on getting to the outcome, and I think it's a key skill for salespeople, which is I've got a quota, I've got a resolver problem and I'm not going to take no for an answer and sometimes it won't be. I'm belligerent about how I want to do it. I will find a resolution to the problem, no matter what roadblocks have put into me. So when, mark, when you kind of look for a self-starter, what does that mean to you?

Mark Randall: 20:43

Yeah, I think drive is one part of it, but I think there's more to it than that. I think the resourcefulness is a key part of that the independence being able to think independently and act independently. In a small start-up, you're not going to get a lot of time and attention from everyone. Things aren't going to be perfect In fact, most things won't be perfect and you've got to be able to navigate that. And in order to do that, you need to be resourceful, you need to be adaptable and you need to have the drive that you spoke to as well.

Daniel Bartels: 21:12

So, simon, what do you reckon self-starter mate when you look at your team, what are the features that you're looking for in someone who's a self-starter?

Simon Peterson: 21:21

Look, I guess, to Mark's point. Early stage start-up is, I guess, chaos. Basically, the job you're hired for is very seldom the job you do. About a week into it Things come up your product's not ready or the market's not there or the marketing engine isn't ready. You don't have a lead system to drive activity.

Simon Peterson: 21:43

And I think if you come out of a big organisation where there's well trodden processes, there's systems for everything that can possibly go wrong, you tend to the person that thrives just doing that tends to just follow the process and push things through the sausage factory a little bit. And I'm certainly not degrading salespeople that work for large organisations, but there is a tendency to you know you've got a crutch that you can fall on because there's three or four other people that can come in and do the demo or there's a process for this, a process for that, etc. And I think early stage start-ups there are no processes, right. So you've got to be comfortable with the absence of certainty it's probably the best way to describe it. And if you come in on a Monday morning and you expect to know what's actually going to happen that day, because that makes you feel happy, an early stage start-up is probably not the environment that you'll thrive in, but some people absolutely love that stuff.

Simon Peterson: 22:41

Right, you have to be a good seller regardless of where you are, but the people I find that thrive in these small teams. They're very creative. They really empathise with the customer because there's not a track record of references you can call on. So you need to build quite that special relationship. You need to focus on building those lighthouse accounts that you can then build on, and that's a special type of person. It may be six months before you get your first deal and so, as a leader, looking at those sort of people, it's not two quarters of failure and you're fired. I'm investing in this business and I'm investing in the people I've hired. So it's a slightly different cadence, I think, and you've got to be used to it and comfortable with it.

Mark Randall: 23:26

I think the blend of people within the team is so important as well, in those like early stage environments as well, like diversity in its broadest sense. Right, you know having people from a range of different skills, backgrounds, experiences, because when you're in that kind of chaotic environment as you described it, which I think is pretty apt, most of the time you know you've got to be able to. You know you're not going to have all the answers and you know you're going to have a lot of stuff that you have to figure out. And you know, in order to figure out things the right way, you know, having as much diversity of thought, background and experiences is really, really key.

Simon Peterson: 24:06

And Mark tell me you know you've got a business now that's going through the motions and building, You've hired a great team, they're diverse, they're creative, et cetera. And as you move closer and closer to the capital event or the IPO, what changes? As I imagine a lot changes as you get closer to that.

Mark Randall: 24:25

Yeah, I think you know the obvious one is that you need more, more experts. You tend to need people that are narrower and deeper in their roles because you know you're becoming more specialized, obviously. So that's the first thing. The leadership side is really super important as well. You know, in both of my global tech roles I was fortunate in that some of the early hires then you know, were able to step up and do really well and become, you know, essentially the leadership team of the of the organizations you have to build, build that out.

Mark Randall: 25:00

But you know that hasn't always been the case, certainly with you know, some of the other local startups. You know that wasn't the case. And then you know you've got different challenges about how you bring you know people in that you know they have a huge amount of leadership experience but perhaps you know they don't have quite that. You know passion, hunger. You know the experience, knowledge of the business that the people that you know you hired early on have. So you know how do you blend that together and how do you yeah, how do you make sure that you're, you know, putting people in the right roles at the right time, especially for scaling really quickly, like, I think scaling quickly is one of the hardest things. I mean it's it's better than being in a you know everything's. Everything's going wrong and we're in a turnaround situation, right, but like it still has its fair share of share of challenges.

Mark Randall: 25:55

And yeah, you know, again, I think having that experience of having worked for organizations that, whilst they were maybe small in APAC in Australia, were big globally, has really been a help to me because you can kind of look at the other regions in the company, right, and say this is what sales, customer success, marketing looks like when it's five times as big as as as we are today. You know, I've been able to do that in my last role with our UK business, for example. They're 18 months ahead, roughly twice a size. So you can kind of, you know, learn a lot. You know from, you know the experience of other regions within within the company. But again, you know local style you don't have that. You're making everything up from scratch. So you know, all you've got is your experience from other roles and that's never quite the same because they're all different. The companies are different, the background different, funding team, like everything's different.

Daniel Bartels: 26:44

So so you, you know you mentioned that that journey of you know getting to IPI and learning off others, and you know, now you're advising both startups and those landing in for startups. So for those who are kind of growing without that sort of global parent, how do you kind of help them set up that, that reference point? Or or is there a you know different people they should be leaning on to learn from? Or it is like, how do they approach that? I think you're right, learning from those who are part of your network or part of your own organization is critical and crucial, and I can't in my career, I can't, thank those who've sort of taught me or I've learned from enough, but when you're in a startup, you don't have that group. So how, how should they approach it?

Mark Randall: 27:27

Yeah, you know, in my case it's essentially starting with a plan, right? So you know a go to market plan and to do a plan you need to award it. You know what's already there, if there is something already there. If you're starting a global tech, you know vendor and region. Obviously you know your plan starts with whatever the global plan was. If it's a local one, it starts with what they've been doing to date and you figure out what's working and what's not working.

Mark Randall: 27:50

So you know I tend to get really like deep on the data first and foremost. You know really trying to understand. You know the sales drivers of the business, so you know I start there. Also understanding. You know the goals and challenges of the key. You know people within the business and kind of putting those two things together to build out the picture, come up with a plan, distill that into. You know typically like 30, 60, 90 day objectives and priorities and you know then work through overseeing the implementation of those, those go to market initiatives or changes and, and you know, helping assist with. You know any hiring. You know that they need or identify talent gaps within the organization.

Mark Randall: 28:39

So you know that's kind of how I'm approaching it now, obviously, it's a little bit different because I'm not full time, you know. So you know I'm having to focus, you know my time and I can only support, you know, two or three clients at a time, currently as well, so you know where we go. Next year is obviously there's an opportunity to, you know, hopefully, support more clients by bringing you know more specialists, and you know that I've worked with in my past more A players, you know, into the teams that we can start to. You know, because I'm not the expert on everything right, I'm good at the overall go to market, but I'm not like a, you know, deep, subject matter digital marketing expert. So you know what I, you know what I hope to do is is try and pull you know some of those experts that I've worked with before in as well, so that you know you can offer, you know, I guess a wider range of services and support more, more clients.

Daniel Bartels: 29:32

We've talked about the things to do right and and I think you know we talk about it in the, the, the the intro for the podcast you learn from your mistakes as much as you learn from your successes. Right, and I think I've got you know, I've got a raft of failures behind me in terms of things that have worked and not like, if you look back kind of the, the key roles you've had, what would be the couple of areas you'd say like they're, they're the things that I tried that didn't work, but like in that, that sort of kernel of knowledge or you know that, that piece that you don't do differently and try and pass on to others.

Mark Randall: 30:03

Yeah, I've reflected on that a lot, a lot recently, and I I mean I distilled that in some, some of that in the LinkedIn post that, yeah, we were talking about earlier as as as well. So, you know, I think you know some of the things, some of them, some of the things are personal to me and some of them are, you know, I guess, systematic of the kind of mistakes that you know global tech companies generally you know make, which is, you know, the things that we were speaking about earlier about. You know lack of market localization, you know, maybe you know hiring issues, rushing expansion, trying to do too much too quickly, misunderstanding the scale, or, you know, executing before you've understood the local market properly. You know those types of things that I guess the things that you know systematically tend to come up very regularly, especially on the global tech companies, and there are definitely things that we've all got wrong in the past. Right, no one's had a perfect hiring record, nobody's managed to get everything localized perfectly to the market that they're operating in I don't think for any global tech vendor ever.

Mark Randall: 31:15

So they just tend to do the things that you're always working on to an extent, and then, obviously, there's things that are kind of more personal to you as well in terms of things that are maybe more unique to your personality. So in my case, I've always had a bit of imposter syndrome. So certainly in my earlier career, I tended to lack conviction or get lack confidence in my convictions some of the time and I would wait for too much data. I think this needs to happen, or this is what the answer is, but maybe I'm not right and let's wait a bit longer. Nine times out of ten, you're right, first time, of course, and the delay just hurts you more. So I think those things are specific to you as an individual as well. So there's always a combination of two and you've got to try and build a decent amount of self-awareness so that you can recognize your own weaknesses, the impact you're performing, as well as the things that are, as I say, systematic and common challenges for similar businesses.

Daniel Bartels: 32:28

What do you reckon on that, Simon? I mean, you've been through this journey a few times yourself. I mean, what do you reckon are the values that you learn? Or you lean back in and look for the lessons and try either not to replicate it again or pass the messages on.

Simon Peterson: 32:43

Yeah, well, look, I think hiring the right people, god it's. I've made some pretty silly old mistakes in hiring over this period and I think, if I reflect on some of the mistakes, and they're not bad people, I just thought them for the wrong roles, right. I kind of knew it as I was going through the process, but I needed to have somebody in place, and that's a mistake I wouldn't repeat, no way. But I think it's really interesting. I totally understand what you're talking about, mark, in terms of imposter syndrome a little bit. I think it's not just when you're in a startup. Funnily enough, it's when you join a new company.

Simon Peterson: 33:27

I've recently joined a new company. I've got to say it took me six to eight weeks before I had the confidence to question things that I knew were dumb and if I reflect on that, I probably could have done it a bit faster. But at the same time I wanted to respect the business I joined because they'd been operational for 10, 15 years. So I think the faster I can move into a new role or a new environment without disrespecting the existing processes, I think is all the people that are running them. But I think I'm three months into a new gig now, and I woke up one morning a week ago and I said, look, I'm going to have to go break some shit. It's the stuff that has to change. It did take me a while to get that confidence, though, and I think the more you do it, the better you get at it.

Simon Peterson: 34:18

I think certainly you know startup in Australia, working for an American company after coming out of Salesforce. That was an interesting journey, right, because I'd just come from a massive, massive organization we had 50, 60 people in the sales team I was leading and a lot of processes, and then I joined Financialforce and I've got to say, when the day I walked in, it was a hobby, if you like, for the US business, because there were two people and not a whole lot of professionalism and execution. The people were good, they just weren't being led. Their boss sat 17-hour flight away, so there's not a whole lot of oversight, so lots of different things, but you've got to love it, right. You've got to throw yourself in the deep end and enjoy the people you're working with, because if you don't enjoy the people you're working with, it's going to pain the neck.

Mark Randall: 35:14

People are the best bit and also the biggest challenges. Most of the time, I think right. So you know. And then they're not just hiring, either right, like hiring or promoting the wrong people, or you know, not doing enough to retain people that you know end up leaving. That you're right. I really wish we hadn't lost that person, you know back then. So you know as you say it's. You know a great team is, you know, one of the things that makes a role, you know, really rewarding and engaging. But you know also making mistakes on either hiring, promoting who you invest in, who you don't invest in. You know that's the thing that tends to cost you the most highly as well.

Daniel Bartels: 35:53

I think on that side, mark, the law of small numbers kicks you in the shins all the time. I mean, if you're running a sales org of 50 people and two people quit, whatever, we're still gonna hit that number. It's okay. You're running a sales org of three people and one person quit 33% of your business, just walked out the door and you've got, you've got no one to carry that quota and you're going to have a lead time on filling that chair and that person, once they even hit the chair, has got a ramp time and you don't have you just don't have coverage for it. So, like you know, as a result, like the decisions you make around keeping someone who either should move on or you know I don't have enough time to develop that person they need, they're in the wrong chair, but I don't have another chair for them Like all these things start to flow into the decisions you're making.

Mark Randall: 36:41

Yeah, harder in a smaller team. You're right, 100%.

Daniel Bartels: 36:44

Absolutely yeah. And then and then, all of a sudden, you're kind of held by the success level or lack of sometimes of this team. You're like but hold on, we talked about this, I get rid of them, it doesn't work. So I think all these things kind of come back into the mix of you know, your back and that startup mentality, and you can't invest ahead of the curve. And the business will say to you hey look, when you start to see some success and some numbers, then we'll grow. But I need the investment to drive the success in the numbers. So like it's a double-edged sword, I think, in terms of it and, as a result, you you know it goes back to what you said at the top of the top of the the hour mark you want people who are self-starters, who will work out how to go and solve the problem and sometimes the problem isn't their job and it's a thing that's just going to have to be done in order for us to get the success.

Simon Peterson: 37:34

I was going to say doing, doing you know hide to run a region. I was out buying fridges and microwaves and negotiating real estate releases and my boss in the US really didn't care about any of that stuff. He wanted to know where my number was and so, yes, you've got to get on with it right. And my poor old credit card got absolutely smashed when we opened that office because there was no real, you know no policy or process for buying things for an office. And yeah, it was. It was kind of interesting, but you know, it's been half my day doing absolutely nothing to do with growing the business, but just building the physical infrastructure so people would want to come into the office and work.

Daniel Bartels: 38:15

Well, mark, we're getting to the, to the, to the top of our hour here and our time together, mate. So one of the things we like to wrap up and you know you've got a wealth of knowledge and a huge piece of experience is really, just like the top tips that you would give to someone either I suppose you know your target market here for Australian go to market like which is you know, a startup, or someone either being that first on ground or leading a team like what are the top two or three tips you'd give them to be most successful in their role?

Mark Randall: 38:45

A lot of the people that you know have founded startups. It's their first time, not always right, but certainly with a lot of the organizations that I'm working with. So you know I would definitely sound it probably sounds a bit self-serving it's not intended to be, but I would definitely say, like you know, make sure you work. You know, either in a professional, personal or, you know, have a strong network of people that have been there, seen it and done it before that you can talk to and work through stuff. You know the mistakes hurt you more than anything. So you know, do everything that you can to try and avoid them, I think you know.

Mark Randall: 39:20

The other thing is, you know people tend to try and do too much, they take on too much or do too much too quickly. So try and dial it down, be realistic about what you can do and do a really good job of focusing on, you know, the top two or three things rather than trying to do like eight or nine different things. And the thirdly, I guess again, would just be have the confidence and your conviction when you know a lot of people are doing it for the first time, in particular founders, you know you often see that they don't have that you know. Confidence in your conviction that I suffered from earlier in my career and that you know tends to lead to a situation where they either delay decisions or they make decisions and then change their mind, you know, very quickly afterwards and that becomes very unstabling. So you know those are probably the top three from my perspective.

Daniel Bartels: 40:07

Mate, mark, great advice, and I think I would agree on that 100%. Like you know, keep your focus list short and tight. I mean, I know that's one of my key lessons out of the different roles that I've had, which is try to you can do so. Do less than you expect in a year and do so much more than you can do you expect in a decade. Right, and it really is about you know, just keeping tight focus on what you want to do. Well, mark, thank you so so much for your time, simon. Thank you as always, and for all of our listeners of the show. We appreciate your time. If you're watching this on YouTube, please click subscribe, click the like button down below. If you are following us on either Apple Music or Spotify one of the other podcast platforms please press the plus button so we can make sure we let you know when the next episode comes up. But again, guys, thank you for joining and listening to us today, mark. Thanks for your time, simon, thank you so much Thanks again for having me.

Mark Randall: 41:02

Thanks, Mark Cheers. Bye.